Goran Bregovic

Amazing concert last night. I'm still a little too exhausted to write about it properly, but it involved a lot of wine, a lot of dancing (almost a mosh pit, which was a little weird given that it was in a jazz festival in Fontainebleu) and finally lots of singing and hugging and saying goodbyes entre nous.

Today I was chiropracted and had a lovely breakfast with Heloise and her boyfriend, then found Deb and Steffi to go up Notre Dame. It was beautiful, visibility was great, the gargoyles were better than I'd expected (especially the elephant and the swamp thing!) and afterwards we frolicked on the playground and looked at shoes at the soldes and it wasa thoroughly lovely day.

Tomorrow must be more practical...

catacombs!

These videos (hilariously from "World's Scariest Places") use our entrance, and make safely fenced off things like wells look really scary. They also don't tell you about the fact that big parties are down there on the weekends, and we ran into 5 or 6 groups several hours into the catacombes when we went on a Saturday night. So, even if these guys don't find the "lost man," if he could hang in for a few days he'd probably be able to find a group. Obviously going down either alone or with just one flashlight is pretty dumb, and I've always been glad to have our Fearless Leaders. Anyway, these videos give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, and I'm really going to miss our underground adventuring.

Little girl, little girl, where'd you sleep last night?

Last night Deb and I went to an extraordinary bluegrass concert. It was much needed after waking up in a pile of white styrofoam balls (it was as if my commande exploded) and after a lovely goodbye lunch with Avye. These goodbyes, even though I know they're not permanant, are wearing and are leaving me raw. This class has been the most extraordinary group, and to watch my friends get scattered to the ends of the earth is just hard.

This meant that Deb and I were particularly open to sitting back and hearing 4 hours of excellent bluegrass with a little blues scattered in. Check out les Ol' Timey Messengers if you ever get the chance. Just a great show. A hilariously serious clogger stationed herself next to us, and they had guest artists like one woman who sang like a 1920s record, and a Georgia bluesman named Danny Mudcat. Afterwards we chatted with the musicians (turned out we sort of knew two of them already) and met a few other friends of friends in the crowd. I had that dreadful and wonderful moment of realizing I really am a part of the Expat community here, and I'm going to miss it like crazy.

After said concert (and a lovely metro ride with the percussionist) Deb and I went round to say goodbye to Emil, and played music until 5 AM. I learned spoons! We got to play a lot of the songs we'd written together a last time, and that was great too. Thus ended the "Weekend After."

and in the end...

My command went well. avye, Danny, and Deb were extraordinary, and it was seamless and mysterious, even if it was too short. The commands I was participating in were also very successful and beautiful (ParticularlyAvye's, Whitney's, Heloise's and Deb's) and now it's all over. Tearful goodbye's with the profs and the first years, purchasing photos and getting our certificates were all trumped by gleeful dancing in the Grand Salle for the last time. What a beautiful space, and what a glorious two years.

Whisky

Last week I saw this fellow (AJ Rocha) in a really excellent concert with Anais Mitchell and this song hasn't left my head since. His songwriting is really incredible.


They say that love is just a chemical reaction
I say that makes this all too hard to explain
Chemicals for me have been my only safe bastion
They maketh me numb whene'er they run through my veins

When you get featherdusted
you're dirty and desperate
Not desperate, mind you, for a woman's sweet touch
Just desperate to feel like you belong to something
That something will own you when you want it too much


It's just a great song style, simple and poetic and talking about a simple kind of heartbreak and a simple kind of fix. It all makes me ready to rediscover the poetry I've shied away from in the "country" music I grew up surrounded by. And to drink the unopened bottle of whisky in my cupboard.

Cold poetry

Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-Robert Frost



The Cold River

by Michael Gullickson
Source: Bridges (2002) p.18

Whatever two people do
as moving closer they
plunge into icy waters
trying to learn hypothermia
and the two distinct stages
of death which are 1) almost and
2) quite which are oddly enough
the two stages of life
and being
that two people
have enough blood to transfuse each other
while the winter river pushes them on
almost drowning
but not quite
and the difference is
buddy - breathing
sharing enough air for one
making it suffice for two
which is the miracle of loaves and fishes
when a hillside full of people can be fed
from lunch- for -one
and Christ anyway told me
it was ok to love anyone
even strangers, except stronger
as he ran my mind on fast-forward
showing me what was love and what was not
as the cold river moved on
as the sky surged and the wind bellowed
a limb to hang on to and each other
and at last nothing more
than one voice from two
loudly against the storm.


Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


I'm still struggling with text in my piece. And all this winter is heavy business, and lonesome frightened nights are too relevent and I'm loving every minute, but where is the line I'm looking for?

on a different note...

Man I've got a long way to go...

Dave and commands

I haven't seen Dave for 2.5 years, since November 2004. It's honestly as if no time has passed. I wish I had more time to spend showing him around the town, but he and his brothers have been doing a tour (they stay in a highrise in Montparnasse and have scheduled activities... aack!) and I've been doing command rehearsals.

The thing about rehearsaing this many pieces at once is that time moves really quickly. an hour and a half in one person's universe, followed by a new universe, etc. also things are coming together in a really big way and it's exciting. It's also nice to be participating fully but not arguing. Ideas are always welcome, but for the first time at this school we can really place ourselves in the able hands of our classmates and be at their service. Mine has the music figured out now, which is exciting, and I'm continuing to construct the sceno which is unreasonably cmplex, but hey. I'm on this path now!


It has been lovely to see Dave after school. The first night we had a picnic by the Seine, walked around the Marais, saw Avye and James, then met up with Deb and Danny for tea and haircuts, finally went to Sacre Coeur. Last night we just sat around his air-conditioned hotel and chatted, but it was really really nice. Good to have some out-of-school perspective as well. The highlight so far was singing "The Road with Dav and Deb and Danny. Worlds colliding in the best possible way.

Marking time

Last night was my last Pub Quiz with A. We were talking about how we've been marking time with Pub Quizzes since the beginning of first year. School is so fast and chaotic that our little moment outside of school became our yardstick. Of course, I already had a "Last Quiz ever with A" back before the decisions. We knew that the next Monday our lives would never be the same, and one of us could ave been sent home. The complete glee when we both made it to that Monday intact (or mostly intact... that was a rough week) was indiscribable.



Things are moving so quickly I can't keep weeks straight. Last week was commands, but in a laid-back way, the week before that was the last Soiree and before that was two weeks of madness and rehearsals which flew the way weeks with every minute scheduled can fly. In a way this period now feels like a coda, like something tacked on after the real end (the Soiree) but there's still no time for nostalgia, so off I go to saw some wood to mae a window!

per usual...

Coming out of an intensely creative environment has made me skittish about the future, about having the same ideas-sharing and venting and blank canvas and so-on. Also distressing is the upcoming move across the Atlantic, possibly all the way back to New Mexico, and certainly far away from my friends and fellow theatre-makers from Lecoq. I figured it might be time to make a nice public blog to keep in touch, and hopefully I will be more faithful to it than I was to its predecessor (to be fair, I moved onto a houseboat with no internet for a month and lost the initiative) and my non-public internet journal remains, well, not very readable. I've also advanced into the world of digital pictures, so I'll stick some of them up. I think I'm just blathering now, but you get the gist.

We're starting in Paris.